At the invitation of the School of Management and Economics, Professor Hsing Kenneth Cheng of the Department of Information Systems and Operations Management of the University of Florida came to our school for an exchange visit, and gave a speech entitled "Operation Dumbo Drop: To Airdrop or Not to Airdrop for Initial Coin Offering Success? Academic report. The report meeting was chaired by Professor Yan Zhijun, and many teachers and students of the college attended the report meeting.

The rapid development and adoption of blockchain technology has heralded the explosive growth of initial coin offerings (ICOs), a new and popular method of financing blockchain startups. Project founders need to advertise their projects ahead of the ICO and incentivize blockchain individuals to invest in subsequent ICOs. More and more blockchain-based project founders are using airdrop campaigns as a form of publicity. Through the airdrop campaign, project founders can distribute a certain amount of official tokens or promotional tokens to potential investors for free on the blockchain without asking for their consent. When blockchain companies are considering whether to launch airdrops, the top concerns are whether airdrops have a positive impact on the investment behavior of potential investors, and whether the effects of airdrops vary according to their personal characteristics. The study found that promotional airdrops can increase the ICO investment probability of potential investors by 2.3 times, and project founders with different personalities from investors are more likely to obtain investment through airdrops than project founders with the same personality. Its research contributes to the literature on ICOs, personality similarity, and direct-to-consumer marketing, and provides important managerial implications for whether and how blockchain companies conduct airdrop campaigns.

After the report, the participating teachers and students had a positive and full discussion with Professor Zheng. The report received enthusiastic response and was well received by teachers and students.

Profile of Prof. Hsing Kenneth Cheng：

Professor Hsing Kenneth Cheng is the John B. Higdon Distinguished Scholar at the University of Florida and Chair of the Department of Information Systems and Operations Management at the Warrington School of Business. He received his PhD in Computer and Information Systems from the University of Rochester in 1992. Professor Zheng's main research interests are analysis of the impact of Internet technology on software development and marketing, information systems policy issues (especially the national debate on net neutrality). Based on papers published in the top three information systems journals, Prof. Zheng is ranked 20th (2009-2011) and 16th (2010-2012) among the Global Information Systems 100 Researchers. Professor Zheng is currently an associate editor of Decision Sciences and a senior editor of the Journal of the Association for Information Systems, Information Systems and electronic Management. He was an associate editor at Information Systems Research from 2011-2014, served on the program committees of many information systems conferences and seminars, and co-chaired the Workshop on E-Business (2003, 2012) and Taiwan Summer Workshop on Information Management programs.